


It's All Everything With You

by gouguruheddo



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Oceans, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 13:35:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10595070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gouguruheddo/pseuds/gouguruheddo
Summary: It means everything when he stays around. Chapter 90 spoilers.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [valisi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valisi/gifts).



> Unofficial sequel to It's All Everything Without You.

They start by remembering each other’s names. 

“Erwin.”

“Levi.”

They know the names are theirs, even though they’ve lived this life by another for over three decades. The other memories bubble from the bases of their brain stems, pop against the surface of their consciousness like the champagne they share. They clink their glasses at New Year’s--another year, another one together. They kiss when the ball drops. Erwin says into Levi’s lips, “Eight years together, darling.” And Levi doesn’t correct him when they sit back into their seats, because it really doesn’t feel like a lifetime away since they had parted.

Love was easy. Instantaneous. Erwin said it after they first met. Took his face between his hands, hands so big and familiar they made Levi’s heart ache with a pain he thought he had forgotten in death. Their lips fell together like they always did, like they had been chiseled from the same stone. And as they lived on together again, they masoned the pieces of this life with the last. It was interesting to see how parallels were formed--how certain phobias transcended through spirit and left them bodily weak. They haven’t remembered everything, they wouldn’t even know when they would have reached the pinnacle of remembering anyway, but they remember enough.

Levi remembers the ocean the following year.

He sits paralyzed in the passenger seat. His hands gripping his pants as if he’s trying to rip them off. He knows now why he has always hated the ocean. He was able to compose himself around imagery and video of it, choking down the anxiety like a pill too big through his throat. But now it was here, undulating like a maggot’s backside, and vast like the sky that sits atop of it. Inside the car, he’s drowning. Inside the car, he’s safe. He swallows, but he can’t move anything else. He’s drowning, he’s...

“Levi?” Erwin takes off his sunglasses and folds them, placing one arm of them into the collar of his polo shirt.

Levi can’t come up with the words. They’re parked right along the beach. He can see the waves rolling in. He can see the brats wadding in the shallow waves. He can see Hange shin deep in water so blue he never knew the specific word for it (he learned in this life it was “turquoise”). He brings his hand to his forehead and shakes out a breath.

“Levi, darling. Talk to me. Did you remember something?”

Levi bites his lip and nods shallowly. He rests the side of his head against the window. It’s cold from the air conditioning blowing on it for the past hour. He feels fevered, sick, disgusted. 

“About what?” Erwin leans over and places his hand on top of Levi’s, and Levi’s fingers relax slightly, the denim of his jeans releasing from under nails. “Maybe I can help you through this, like when you remembered…”

“We made it…” Levi starts, because he’d rather talk about this than about the serum. “We made it to the ocean.”

“Oh?” Erwin huffs out a sound of amusement. It surprises Levi, and he turns his head to look. There’s a smile and a blank stare on his face… Just like that other time. “That’s… Awesome.”

“What?” And Levi can’t tell if he’s more surprised by the word or by the mood. “How is that  _ awesome _ ?”

Erwin turns to look at Levi, grin wide and childlike. “You all fought so hard. You were able to achieve something that could have never been dreamed of for an entire century. That’s… Remarkable.”

"It sucked.” Levi sinks into his seat.

It’s Erwin’s turn to be confused. “How?”

“It…” Levi swallows and presses his shoulder into the door. “The brats were so excited.” Erwin watches him with quiet attention, his thumb trailing across Levi’s fingers tenderly, as if trying to search for the scars that used to be there. Levi’s a teacher now, he has no blade cuts on his hands, just the faded ones on his wrists.  “Even Hange loosened up.” Levi tries to laugh, but it comes out like whimper. “Big fuckin’ feet tromping through the sand… Picking up, uh…” It takes him a moment to remember the word he knew in this life, one that he didn’t know back then. “A, uh, snail... And proddin’ it like it was a damn titan.”

“Sounds like it was nice.”

Levi squeezes his jeans again, and Erwin’s hand stays formed tightly around his. “You should have been there.”

“We’re here together now.”

“It’s not the same.” Levi squeezes Erwin’s fingers in his own. “I was so goddamn mad. I wanted them all to just be fuckin’ sucked away into the waves. I’ve never felt like that... It wasn’t… It wasn’t fuckin’ fair.”

“We’re together.”

Levi looks up at Erwin, his lip between his teeth. “I never wanted to stop sharing my life with you.” He’s crying now, quiet tears that only drown his voice, makes it deeper and sorrowful. Tears enough for two lifetimes, crying now when he couldn’t then, at a place Levi had imagined at the time to be the edge of the world. “I thought I was stronger. But I missed you so fuckin’ much, Erwin.”

Erwin looks at him, watches him, studies him, learns him all over again. Levi had been so strong, had let Erwin rest with his comrades, let him die a soldier’s--no, a commander’s--death out on the field. He sacrificed his own happiness, his own sanity, to grant Erwin dignity. 

Squeezing his fingers around Levi’s shaking one, Erwin leans across the center console of the SUV and places a kiss on Levi’s cheek. “We can go home. I apologize for bringing you here.”

Levi’s lips move against his teeth as he tries to control his breathing, tries to push the tears back into their place. But his past life claws out from the back of his mind, takes control of his emotions, and sends his body forward, crumpled into the seat with his back heaving out heavy, devastating sobs. It was worse than when he remembered the serum, because the serum was the last thing he remembered from his past life. He had hoped he had died shortly after, that there was no continuation to his story. That the memories stopped there, and only new ones would be created.

Afterall, how could there be anything else to remember after Erwin?

“Levi! Levi…” Erwin unbuckles himself and hastily gets out of the car. He rounds the front of it and pulls Levi’s door open, turns the man’s small body toward him and wraps his arms around him. He shushes him against his chest, feels weak fingers come up around his neck and pull him closer as it grows wet with Levi’s tears. “It’s okay. We can leave. I’m here, and we’re together, and we can leave. We don’t ever,  _ ever _ have to see the ocean again.”

Levi buries his face in Erwin’s shoulder, gasps loudly as his eyes screw shut, leaking tears as hot and slick as the blood that covered his face on that day he held the syringe. The cries hurt, wrench from his body like his spirit passing through flesh, and he finally finds enough strength to squeeze his arms tightly around Erwin. Because he’s here. Dear god, he’s here, and he’s alive, and even after he knew, oh god, even after he knew, he didn’t leave. He just…

Erwin’s hand comes up to cradle the back of Levi’s head. He places soft kisses into Levi’s neck and shoulder while shushing gentle, quiet words. “I love you.” He says. He says it all the time in this life, means it more and more with each iteration. But now he says it without taking a chance to refresh a breath, breaks only for placing his lips somewhere, anywhere, on Levi. Trying without understanding how to sedate a man that never needed comfort before, finding it more and more difficult that two lives was far too many for any one man to share, let alone two. “Levi.”

“Shut up.” Levi hisses through a beaten voice, and he just doesn’t want to hear what he knows is going to come next. He didn’t fucking deserve to see the ocean, not without him. He should have fucking died. He should have…

“Thank you.”

Levi pulls Erwin closer, practically drags him back into the car as he tightens his teeth so hard he hears the grind of them throughout his entire skull. “ _ Shut up _ .” 

“I’m sorry I died. I’m sorry I left you alone. But I’m here now, and you have always given me a life worth living. You gave me a death I never deserved.” Levi’s breathing slows, but his grip is still tight around Erwin. “I’m glad you got to experience the things I could not... So you could share them with me in this life.”

Levi sits, catches his breath weakly against Erwin until he pulls back and looks at Erwin. Erwin who is here, alive again, breathing, telling him he loves him, holds him every night even through the nightmares they both share. The man that loves him even though he was killed by him--no… No he didn’t kill Erwin. “Erwin.”

“Let’s go home.” Erwin kisses Levi tenderly, carefully, as if he’s afraid he’ll disappear like a short term memory. “Let’s go home and watch some reality television and eat some ice cream.” He smiles, tries to laugh, but he hurts just as much as Levi. Wants his captain to feel better, wants him to know that his life always had a meaning even without him.

“But you…” Levi croaks out, and he feels like a child, nose bubbling with snot and eyes big and red from too many tears. “You spent all this money…”

Erwin laughs out heartily. It makes Levi feel small, and he nestles back into Erwin’s embrace. “No no, Levi. It doesn’t matter. This vacation is nothing if you don’t enjoy it.”

Levi stares into Erwin’s shoulder, blinks slowly as he begins to feel normal again. “I want to see it.”

“Hm?” Erwin asks, rubbing a hand gently over Levi’s back. 

“I want to see the ocean with you.” And truthfully, he had managed to avoid it completely in this life. All he knew of the ocean was in his past life--sweet and salty, the smell of steaming cabbage, and the heavy, sticky taste of water gone rotten and permeating in the air. Maybe it was different now. Maybe… “I want to.”

Erwin draws back, nods at Levi as he meets his eyes. He draws his thumbs across puffy red eyes and smiles with a gentleness that he only shows around Levi. “All right.”

“Ok.” Levi says, pushing his cheek into Erwin’s palm, kisses his wrist and sighs out when he feels the pulse beating against his lips.

Levi holds Erwin’s hand tight and close to him, holds it in front of his body as if the ocean is some kind of aggressor meant to beat him down again. With his nose pressed against Erwin’s bicep, he presses a kiss to the soft skin as they struggle across beach sand in flip flops. Erwin loses a sandal, needs to go back to retrieve it, never once losing Levi wrapped around his arm like a barnacle. Kissing the top of Levi’s head, he smiles and says for the millionth and one time: “I love you.”

They make it to wet sand and Erwin steps out of his sandals, Levi following his example as their toes sink into the ground. Levi holds onto Erwin’s arm as he continues to move toward the water, anchors his arm away from Erwin, his eyes pleading up at him. “Come on, darling.” Erwin says, softly.

Levi takes a hesitant step forward. He never felt the ocean. Never removed his boots, not even his scabbards, when they had gone to the ocean. The sensation was uncomfortable. Dirty. Unsettling. He moves to stand next to Erwin again, forehead resting on his arm.

“We’ll just stand here for a few minutes, all right?” Erwin squeeze Levi’s hand. “The water might touch us.”

“Okay…”

The waves pull and push against the shore, crashing like static as each sheet of water folds over itself. White, frothy bubbles lace the edges of cresting water and they pop and draw clear as the ocean drags away the water, leaving holes of feeding clams and oysters in its wake. A wave circles up, grows large, and crashes up the sand, rushes too quickly for them to step backward, and the water licks up to Levi’s shin as he clutches terrified to Erwin.

“ _ Fuck _ .” Levi hisses.

“It’s all right.” And Erwin anchors him. Keeps him steady, calm. He’s smiling, toothy and satisfied. Unmoving like he was on the battlefield.

“It’s cold.”

Erwin laughs. “Yes.”

“We’ll catch hyperthermia.”

“You’re a health teacher. You know that’s not true.”

Levi tuts. But he relaxes, settles his weight into the squishy sand, lets his toes wiggle and sink. “Give me another hour and I can show you how true it is.”

Erwin releases his hand and wraps it around the small of Levi’s back, pulls his hip to his. “An hour, you say?”

Levi rests his head against Erwin’s arm, wraps his arm around Erwin’s waist, and sighs softly. “Yeah.”

Another wave sighs onto the shore, tickles their feet with crackling chatter of chill. But it feels alive. Moving. Vast and unfathomable but beautiful. And comforting. Levi closes his eyes, breathes in the smell of seaweed and salt, sighs out the disappointment and anger and fear. Erwin’s here. Erwin’s here and...  “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Erwin squeezes Levi’s hip to his. “More than anything.”


End file.
